This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Researchers from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory have documented ancient forests that grew on the Mozambican coast thousands of years ago and have been found beneath the sea, where they now serve as hotspots teeming with marine life similar in biodiversity to coral reefs. The discovery raises the question of how many more of these hidden peat reefs exist around the world's coastlines and how to evaluate them as a carbon store and develop policies to protect them and their biodiversity.
The paper in Scientific Reports published by the BCSS Ocean Observatory, working in collaboration with researchers from U.K., U.S. and Canadian universities and research institutions, has documented submerged "peat reefs" in the shallow waters of the Bazaruto Archipelago (western Indian Ocean). It is believed to be the first ecological study of peat reefs anywhere in the tropics and the first globally from a biodiversity angle. The research follows two papers published in Frontiers in Marine Science that described the capabilities of the BCSS Ocean Observatory, which enabled this research.
Established in Mozambique's Bazaruto Archipelago in 2017, BCSS is Africa's first permanent Ocean Observatory and has generated more than 22 million measurements across more than 30 chemical, environmental and biodiversity variables, spanning six interconnected ecosystems and 14 long-term monitoring stations across an approximately 6,850 km² (2,645 square miles) monitoring area in the greater Bazaruto seascape—from mangroves, seagrass meadows, peat and coral reefs to lagoons, seamounts and the open ocean. The reefs are made of peat: compressed, carbon-rich remains of coastal swamps and forests. As sea levels rose over the past few thousand years, and continue to rise, the sea flooded these landscapes.
Waves later stripped away the sand above them, leaving firm peat platforms exposed on the seabed. The substrate was then colonized by marine life whose biodiversity is comparable to neighboring coral reefs. Radiocarbon dating (14C) shows the peat formed between roughly 300 and 5,000 years ago.
Chemical analysis confirms it mostly came from coastal land plants and trees. Some peat samples contain up to 40% organic carbon by dry weight. However, more work needs to be done to determine if these systems can function as a long-term legacy carbon store and what their role is in blue-carbon storage.
This carbon has been stored and sequestered underwater for thousands of years. On land (blue carbon), peat swamps can hold 1,000–2,000 tons of carbon per hectare below ground, but no one yet knows how much the reefs hold or whether they are storing or releasing it today. The paper itself says the peat reefs' present-day role in carbon cycling remains unresolved and requires dedicated measurements of peat thickness, bulk density, areal carbon stocks, burial or erosion rates and greenhouse gas fluxes.
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